Northwood man gets jail for threat to murder judge

BRENTWOOD — A Northwood man will spend roughly six months in county jail for threatening to kill a circuit court judge.

John Dembkoski, 63, pleaded guilty to two charges Wednesday at Rockingham County Superior Court in connection with comments he made while being booked at the county jail on Jan. 17.

Judge N. William Delker ordered Dembkoski to serve a 12-month jail sentence, half of which will be suspended if he abides by the conditions of his plea agreement with state prosecutors.

Dembkoski will remain on probation for two years.

As part of his plea agreement, he is required to undergo evaluations for mental health, anger management and drug and alcohol use, according to state prosecutor Stacey Coughlin.

The sheriff’s department began investigating Dembkoski for remarks he made to a corrections officer shortly after he was taken into custody at the Rockingham County jail in Brentwood.

Exeter police arrested Dembkoski about 6:30 p.m. and brought him to the Rockingham County jail for allegedly violating a protective order, court records say.

About 10 minutes into the booking process, Dembkoski told Corrections Officer Jonathan Banville “that he was going to kill his wife when he leaves the jail,” Rockingham Sheriff Deputy Raymond Berube said in a sworn affidavit. Dembkoski also “stated to the corrections officer that if the judge does not let him out on Tuesday, he was going to kill the judge as well.”

He then told Banville that he “was compiling a hit list,” according to the affidavit.

Dembkoski was indicted last month on a single count of harm or threats to a certain government official, a Class A felony that is punishable by up to 7 ½ to 15 years in state prison. He also faced three counts of criminal threatening.

He was convicted of making threats to a certain government officials and criminal threatening on Wednesday, a felony and misdemeanor. Prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining charges pending against him in exchange of his guilty plea.

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